For want of a nail
by Oscillating between identities
Summary: The downfall of the Dursleys and consequent improvement in Harry Potter's life started with something Petunia would understand very well indeed. It started with a simple little thing called jealousy.


1

The downfall of the Dursleys started with something Petunia would understand very well indeed. It started with a simple little thing called jealousy.

It began a while ago, when Petunia bragged about sending Dudley off to Smeltings to her friends. Most of them congratulated her heartily, their own children going there as well.

One Piers Polkiss' mother, Judith, congratulated her too, her own son would also be joining Dudley at Smeltings. But to afford the school's tuition, Judith's trips to London were going to be cancelled, her country club membership revoked and their car was going to be sold and a cheaper, more affordable one to be bought in its stead.

Judith did _not_ like that. She had gotten comfortable with the life she was living, so any and all changes were rather unwelcome.

Judith wondered how the Dursleys were affording it. She knew Vernon wasn't really making that much money at Grunnings, certainly not enough for the school's tuition _and_ the new fancy car. So, she started making noises. And it just so happened that she made those noises around her cousin Edna.

Edna who was married to Chief Inspector Garvin Owens who considered those noises carefully.

Because really, how was Vernon affording all this? After all, the boy they'd been fostering had nothing to his name, Petunia claimed that often enough, so it couldn't be that they were being compensated for that Harry boy's upkeep. Investigations began discreetly. They were looking for fraud.

They found other things. Like the fact that the boy, Harry, had a few too many bruises on him. The Dursleys always had an excuse handy but...the investigators looked closer then, asked questions in the neighbourhood, discreetly of course, and didn't like what they were hearing.

Steadily the pile of evidence against Vernon Dursley grew.

And then a day that came after a long stretch of time when there had been very few, _suspiciously_ few sightings of the boy. Vernon Dursley was caught in an alley making a deal with a shady man, coming away from the meeting with a thin long package in his hands.

A thin long package that had in it a rifle.

Suffice it to say that the scandal that followed was fairly impossible for even the Great Albus Dumbledore to suppress. He would need an actual squad of official Obliviators to deal with it and they would wonder why they were needed. They would ask what they were obliviating. They would find out that the Boy-Who-Lived was living with abusive muggles one of whom had bought a gun, one of those horrid little muggle weapons, when he found out that Harry would most definitely be attending Hogwarts.

And they would _not_ be happy or keep quiet. Dumbledore was a great wizard but Harry Potter had ended the war as a baby. As annoyed as he was by it, the Boy-Who-Lived held far more political power than he did, at the moment at least. He had plans to deal with that later.

But yes, suffice it to say that Dumbledore was fucked. Petunia refused to have anything to do with Harry, all the compulsions and even an Imperius in the world weren't enough to overcome her hatred and bend her will, very impressive really but inconvenient as well. All his supporters were far too nice to raise the boy and the ones who weren't nice had too strong a personality to bend to Dumbledore's will. They would run things their way which galled Dumbledore. To be so out of the loop, so lacking in control...no that wouldn't do.

So Dumbledore continued his search for a suitable guardian.

Meanwhile, Harry Potter was placed in a local children's home, a very nice place actually, much nicer than the Dursleys. There were very few orphans there and so the caretakers could truly give the children the attention they needed and deserved and they were the type of people who got made fun of for how much they cared which was absolutely lovely for the children.

So for the month before Hogwarts, Harry Potter lived in a room with a window, a room he didn't have to share with anyone, a place where the chores he was given was to take care of Maisie, the littlest child in the place at the tender age of three years old who adored Harry and no one else. He got clothes, secondhand but ones that fit, got glasses that he could actually see with and golden star stickers on his chart for good behaviour.

And on the day when Hagrid came to pick him up to take him to school he spent a good fifteen minutes saying goodbye to everyone and then another ten with his face buried in the matron's dress because he would miss her.

So, it was a very different Harry Potter who attended Hogwarts. This is his story.


End file.
